


The Lover Out of Space

by Ellstra



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Dubious Consent, Illegal Activities, M/M, Mind Manipulation, Necrophilia, Other, Possession, Soulmates, eldritch horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 13:12:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14593746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellstra/pseuds/Ellstra
Summary: Forensic pathologist Armitage Hux is tasked with examining an unnaturally beautiful body of an unknown young man. He loses his mind, and finds himself anew.





	The Lover Out of Space

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by an ancient prompt on the kyluxhardkinks blog. The title is a play on the name of Lovecraft's story "The Color Out of Space".   
> I've been going through a lot of stuff lately and my writing has suffered a lot for it, and this story was the only thing I could concentrate on, so it's kind of special for me. If you opened the link even after reading the tags, hooray! It means a lot, and I hope you enjoy it.

Something blinks in the very corner of Hux’s eye. He glances to the side, but it’s just the digital clock, switching from 01:59 to 02:00. The green glow keeps catching his attention, and he always berates himself for allowing it. He looks back to the magazine he’s studying; there’s a stain in the corner from when he accidentally laid his cup of tea on it. He’s tired, more than usual; a bad sign. That always brings about a shitstorm of work – car crashes, multiple homicides, brawls with so many stab wounds that it’s difficult to tell whose all the blood is. Hux supposes he shouldn’t think of human tragedies only in terms of how much work they’d bring him, but it’s the only way he can think of to stay sane. Seeing the bodies on his table as objects he needs to assess rather than people has kept him from breaking down. He doesn’t care if people think he’s too cynical.

Hux shakes his head and stands up to stretch. His shoulders ache when he rolls them back. He intertwines his fingers in front of his chest and pulls them forward, hunching his spine. There’s still tension there, but he doesn’t want to lie down on the floor for the more suitable exercises. They’ll have to wait until he comes home. He stretches some more, does a couple of squats to help his blood run faster, and turns to his kettle to make more tea. His body seems to have decided to become desensitized to caffeine today – he can’t even remember how many cups he’s had and yet he’s still exhausted. 

The kettle hums, then purrs. Hux’s eyes close against his will as he leans against the counter with one hand. His mind feels fuzzy; he tries to open them but his lids are too heavy– 

A siren pierces the air. Hux jumps up, heart beating in his throat, and looks around for threats. The noise continues, and it takes him several seconds to realise it’s his work phone’s ringtone. He never quite got used to it – he keeps his personal phone in silent mode. He stifles the ringing with a press of a button. His blood pressure has gone up, throbbing in his temples. 

“Hux.”

“Someone found a body in the forest. I’ll send you the coordinates,” the operator on the other side, Linda, tells him. Linda was never one for formalities and small talk. Hux likes her and considers her to be a friend even if he never saw her in person.

“Just one?” 

“Yeah, not enough for you?”

“I’m kind of expecting some catastrophe to happen tonight,” Hux explains. 

“Sorry to disappoint then.”

“Bye, Linda.”

“Have fun.” She always ends their conversation in a funny way, as if Hux isn’t going to judge the character of a human tragedy. He supposes that’s the reason why he likes her so much. She doesn’t hide her cynicism. 

Hux puts on his coat and is locking his door by the time his phone chirps again with the coordinates. Pulling the key out of the lock, he can hear the pop of the kettle turning itself off automatically. So much for overdosing on caffeine. 

Hux sits down into his car, shivering with the tiredness and cold. He turns the heating on and puts the coordinates into his gps; he’s twenty minutes away from the place. He pulls the sleeves of his coat onto his palms before he lays them onto the steering wheel. An ambulance passes him by on his way out of the hospital parking lot. 

He fiddles with the phone in his lap, trying to find some music to keep him awake. He opts for Death’s  _ Symbolic _ , a metal album one of his exes introduced him to. He’d kicked out the guy, but kept his music recommendations and his recipe for a wonderful homemade pizza. The roads are nearly empty, and soon he drives out of the city. A strange feeling creeps up on him – as if he’s not fully himself, as if his body is driving the car but his mind is somewhere else. He doesn’t try to make it go away; it feels like the afterglow of a very good orgasm in the wee hours of the night, or like that one time he tried pot. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears. 

He nearly misses the turn into the forest. He leaves the car by those of the techs already on the scene, and tells himself to follow the light of their flashlights. Yet he doesn’t need to; something in his gut drags him deep into the forest. The fuzziness in his mind doesn’t go away – if anything, he sinks deeper into its sticky, cottony embrace. He tries to blink, grimace, he even pinches the backs of his hands, but the strange feeling stays. He’s not sleepy anymore, caught in the confines of his sympathetic nervous system. The light of the flashlights is too bright for him to look at.

“Hello, Doctor,” a technician greets him. He has a camera in his hands, and there are several similarly equipped people around. “Bloody cold, innit?”

“Yes,” Hux agrees absent-mindedly, barely hearing the man. The nagging urge to go further is painful now – as if something is scratching his insides, tickling his intestines and caressing his pancreas. Like an aneurysm on the aorta, threatening to burst open and fill his abdomen with blood, killing him before he knows what happened. He barely hears the words of the people around him, and he has to force himself to stand there and pretend to be paying attention. He hastily puts on his gloves – nitrile, blue like a summer sky, never latex – and slips into the protective overall.

“We can pack up and go home,” the tech goes on. “There’s absolutely nothing we could take back for analysis – no hair, no blood, no wallet, no nothing.” 

“That’s impossible. You have to keep looking.” 

“Come see for yourself, Doc.”

Hux doesn’t need their invitation. He hurries as much as he can without arousing suspicion. He feels faint, his stomach twisted into a tight knot, like before an important exam. He wonders if he’d eaten anything – with all that caffeine it could easily be his body’s natural reaction.

All these thoughts desert him when the tech finally reveals the body on the ground. 

Seeing him is like a punch to the gut. Hux’s breath catches in his throat and he has to cough to regain control of himself. His fingers tingle, but when he reaches them forward, they’re as steady as ever. He squats to get closer to the body, studying its peculiar colour.  _ Inspection, auscultation, percussion and palpation _ , Hux recalls the elderly professor from his first ever classes of internal medicine. He hadn’t used this knowledge since graduating, yet he remembers it now. This body seems too perfect to be touched, let alone to be cut open and examined. 

“You said there was no wallet? So we don’t know who he is?” Hux asks the tech to distract himself. He yearns to touch the body, like a friend would, or a lover. It terrifies him. 

“No, it’s a John Doe,” the tech sighs. “And a really peculiar one at that.”

“Yeah,” Hux nods. 

The body lies on its back, arms crossed on the chest like a pharaoh awaiting eternal life. It’s naked, and all the stranger for it. There are no signs of external injury, of struggle, but not even regular everyday scratches from cutting oneself while cooking or bruises from hitting the corner of a table with one’s thigh. The skin is unblemished, perfectly white and symmetrical, with just a sprinkle of birthmarks that seem carefully, deliberately placed. Like someone created a perfect marble statue and then decided to make it more lifelike to shatter its uncanny virtue. It’s only made the man more beautiful. Hux feels uncomfortable and too hot in the chilly air. Mist curls around his ankles, obscuring the body’s face. 

Hux touches the stomach – hard as stone, it must have been there for a couple of hours at least, especially with the cold. But in that case, where were the livores mortis? The skin ought to have turned violet. Hux can’t guess the temperature, not here by the freezing river and with gloves on his hands, but the comparison to marble stays at the forefront of his mind. 

There’s some noise behind him and Hux starts. He turns his head to look over his shoulder; he’d forgotten that he’s not alone with the body. He blinks repeatedly and pulls his hand back, hoping he didn’t grope too much – there’s thick fog stuffing his memory. He clears his throat and stands up, just in time to see the cops arrive. 

“Hux, what do you have for us?” Phasma asks. She joins him above the cadaver, and Hux feels unreasonably, painfully jealous. He takes a small step closer to the body, hoping she wouldn’t notice. He doesn’t even know why he did it, yet it felt that he’d go crazy if he didn’t.

“I have no idea,” Hux replies. “I can’t tell you anything. No ID, no external injury. The state of the body doesn’t allow me to tell you how long he’s been dead. I hope I’ll be able to tell you more later, but right now I can say that it’s a caucasian male, aged between twenty five and forty, and there are no visible signs of struggle or the cause of death.”

“In other words, you can tell me what I can see for myself,” Phasma assesses. Her partner, whose name Hux can’t remember, squats down to the body, probably to see if Hux overlooked anything. A low growl forms in Hux’s throat, but he manages to mask it with a cough before it escapes. 

“I guess.” 

“Well this looks like a fun case,” Phasma says, “you found anything, Dmitri?” 

“Nah. My best guess is poison,” the petite man, appearing even smaller beside Phasma, replies. 

“That’s a working hypothesis for me too,” Hux agrees, “I’ll focus on toxicology.”

“And on identifying the body. The techs say the fingerprints don’t match anything in the database, so you’ll have to take his DNA.”

Something tells Hux that he won’t find anything in the DNA database, or even the stomatology one, if it came to that, but he keeps that to himself. “Noted. Let’s go, it’s freezing here.”

_ Yes, it is, isn’t it? _ Hux thinks to himself.  _ It’s freezing, there’s hoarfrost everywhere, even on the victim’s body. Yet my body is on fire.   _

“Take him to my lab,” Hux instructs the techs, “I’ll be right behind you.”

The drive to the hospital is agonising. It feels endless, and the uncomfortable pressure on his insides is back. Hux can’t focus on the music anymore, and he doesn’t notice when the album gets inexplicably changed into a song by H. P. Lovecraft II until chills run down his spine. He reaches for his phone to change it, but it wouldn’t let him, insisting that it’s still playing Death. His hands begin to shake and his heart rate picks up, faster and louder than the engine of his car. His palms are cold and clammy on the steering wheel. He runs a red light without even noticing, and the screech of tires of a car trying to avoid collision with him gets drowned in the music. 

He doesn’t bother driving his car into his usual spot in the car park, stopping instead in the closest corner, taking up two spaces. He gets out of the car, shakily, and barely remembers to lock it as he stumbles back to the lab, like his life depends on it. He forgets his phone on the passenger’s seat, but he still hears the melody of  _ Spin, Spin, Spin  _ vibrating within his bones. 

Hux locks the door to the lab, turns the lights on and takes off his coat, his hat, his scarf, and he continues undressing until he’s in his underwear, each removed article of clothing a soothing relief for his burning skin. He only stops then, because the hem of his briefs catches on his erection and he sighs, closing his eyes to take a moment to stroke himself. Somehow, it feels like he’s not alone. Someone is holding him from behind, guiding his hand with soft caresses, and Hux doesn’t feel as afraid as he probably should. A moan reaches his ears, and he realizes, embarrassed, that it came out of his lips. 

His eyes fly wide open and it takes a while before he places his surroundings. 

He was about to jerk off in his autopsy lab. With a cadaver on his table. He thinks about putting on his scrubs, but his eyes land on the body on the table and he stops. He’s sweating, despite the cold, and he knows he probably has red spots all over his face and chest. Putting clothes on would suffocate him, he’s sure. It’s just preservation instinct.

He approaches the body, watches it for a long time; just watches, takes in the asymmetry of its face. The rest of the body is sculpted to hold no differences between left and right, but the face is as uneven as it can get to still look beautiful. Hux reaches forward and touches the lips, plush and unnaturally red, with the tip of his index finger. The skin of it is soft, warm even, and yielding. Hux frowns; something is telling him this is impossible, but he dismisses it. He applies slight pressure on it and the lips part. 

_ DNA,  _ Hux remembers,  _ I need to learn who this is.   _

His training pushes through, and he works as he was taught – DNA samples, overall inspection. He doesn’t find any external wounds, and the skin and mucosa look fine. Hux’s head spins and he’s tired, imagining things – for how else could it seem like the skin is getting warmer and pinker under his touch? The rigor mortis seems to be going away, but not the way it should, leaving behind a limp, soft heap of useless putrid flesh. Instead it feels like Hux’s touch wakes it up. Hux opens the victim’s eyes, closed until now. Maybe no one checked if the man was really dead, and he was just subcool? Did Hux check himself? He can’t remember. Maybe he’s sick. Fever could definitely explain why he seems to only remember despair and longing from seeing the body for the first time, or why he seems to be hot and sweating nearly naked in the cold of the lab. Maybe he just needs a break, a holiday, he hasn’t been on a holiday in ages–

A pair of dark eyes greet him, the pupils so big he can barely see the color of the irises. He pushes the lids closed again, unable to stare into the void of them. His fingers move down to the neck of the dead, checking for pulse, absurdly, inexplicably, yet he can’t help it. He closes his eyes when he concentrates on finding a heartbeat, as if the man is not dead. He can’t feel anything, but the body is positively warm now. Hux blinks. Warm skin means circulation – circulation means a beating heart. He grabs the body’s wrists and this time, they don’t resist when he pulls them to the side. 

_ Fingers to the intercostal spaces, the apex of the heart normally projects itself to the fourth or fifth space. _

Hux hadn’t had the chance to palpate a heart in years. He’s not sure why he does it now, but it seems important. He can’t feel it, but he finds something even more peculiar. The nipple grows hard beneath his fingers. Hux’s eyes widen and he pulls his hand back in horror. He can see it too, the unmistakable, inexplicable contraction of muscles that just shouldn’t be possible. He takes the other nipple between his fingers and twists. 

“How,” he whispers, his voice husky as he cups the perfectly defined pecs in both hands, dragging his fingers over them with vicious, desperate urgency. He doesn’t realise he’s rubbing his crotch against the side of the table until the bubbling, swelling heat in his pelvis explodes and he comes with a cry, staining the body. He collapses on top of the corpse, unable to stay upright as his legs tremble, his breathing shaky. 

Blood is pulsing in his temples, his hands are trembling, from exhaustion, from hypoglycemia, from the force of the orgasm. He stands up, his eyes unfocused as his fingers search for the impossible heartbeat, groping for a pulsating femoral artery. He only realises what he’s doing when his hands stop at the body’s groin, feeling too close to the middle to be successful. 

_ What the fuck am I doing?  _ Hux thinks suddenly, a sharp spike of clarity piercing through the haze in his mind. Something – like fingertips, or perhaps lips – caresses him between the shoulder blades and slips onto his right arm. The panic goes away and he’s content again, a ghost of a touch on his wrist and his hand is moving again, satiating his curiosity, his desire. He doesn’t expect anything to happen, for nothing can happen, but he still takes the penis in his hand as he would that of a partner or his own, and before he knows it, his fingers are caressing the underside of it, thumb slipping into the slit. He loses himself in the task, focused on bringing pleasure to this man, to this beautiful, lifeless corpse, as if he himself were to die if he failed. His own body shivers with excitement, again, blood coursing too fast, too hard, and it’s nearly boiling in his arteries, his veins overfilled, prominent and pulsating against all odds. His blood pressure has always been a little lower than usual, but now he’s certain his heart pumps so hard it will tear into shreds. It seems to him that he can feel music quiver within his bones, a strange mixture of sounds that shouldn’t exist together. He’s aroused again, but he hardly notices it; the tension in his pelvis, the strain of his muscles, or the way he barely remembers to breathe are all there, but they go unnoticed, trifling when faced with the gravity of his task. The music grows stronger, forming into a more prominent melody. Hux tries to categorize it, but he can’t – he’s ready to say it’s Mozart when it shifts into Joy Division, yet that realisation brings him further still. His body is on fire, and he doesn’t have enough time, he’s too slow, too sloppy, too imperfect, he won’t make it–

A deafening bang interrupts the soft symphony of his body. His eyes open – when did he close them? – and an electric wave courses through his body. It’s a breath away from ecstasy, but even closer to agony, and it’s perfect and dreadful and not enough.

He can’t see clearly, his vision blurry and too bright, and Hux wonders if he somehow lost his contacts. He blinks and tries to focus his eyes; the terrible tension that’s pulling him taut into an opisthotonus subsides, though it doesn’t go away, as if it retreated into the back of his consciousness and waits for the opportunity to wake again. The lab is too bright, meticulously clean and so so cold, so unfriendly. He registers only now how sweaty he is. In the distance, he can hear a siren of an ambulance car. His right wrist cramps and he pulls it to his chest to stretch it – there’s blood on it, cold and sticky, but unmistakably red. He gags, bile rising into his throat, and he barely stops himself from throwing up. He rushes to the sink and washes his hands, rubs them clean with the little brush until they’re raw and bleeding and he can reassure himself that it was his blood, his clean and warm and natural blood, and he just cut himself with a scalpel. 

The music inside him grows louder again and he whimpers. His whole body aches to go back to the table while his mind sends out one cry for help after another. He’s nauseous, his vision blurs and he gropes for the edge of the sink to steady himself, to regain control of his body. He’s sick –  _ could be meningitis, couldn’t it _ – he just needs to get help, he’s in the hospital, it will be okay–

His hands find something solid to hold onto and he feels a little stronger. The music returns, urgent but soothing, and he gives in to it, lets it caress him. His eyelids flutter and he can see that he’s by the table again. A surge of panic rises between his lungs but his heart rushes to stifle it. Hux moves without knowing it – the music guides him to relief, and he moans when the pain gives way to pleasure. He opens his eyes and looks around.

He’s curled up on top of the table, between the corpse’s legs. He knows rationally that he can’t be that small, and yet he’s there, hiding from the world. The pleasure of having found his place ebbs away, and he feels a terrible need, a need for something that’s quite close but too ephemeral to name. He knows that if he named it, he’d know how to satisfy himself, but he doesn’t know, and so he suffers. The music grows dissonant and loud, and Hux covers his ears to make it go away, but it’s within him, hurting his very soul. He’s alone, and abandoned, and he yearns for companionship, for proximity, for belonging. The ache in his body grows stronger as he looks around, knowing the solution is at hand. 

Then he sees it – a miracle, an opportunity. The beautiful man, the gift to him from nature itself, loves him. Hux purrs like a kitten and, just like a kitten, moves to lick his beloved to show his affection. He plants a light kiss to the inside of his lover’s thigh, and another, and another, until just licking is not enough and he has to devour. 

He’s done this before – his mouth knows how to move, his jaws how to relax, his tongue how to make way. Flesh, hard and so so cold, hits the back of his throat but he doesn’t gag, for his task is too important. He has to chase the cold away, to wake his desire from slumber, but it’s too difficult and his mouth is not enough. 

A wave of terror washes over Hux as he realises he’ll have to leave the safety of his sanctuary. But it needs to be done. His lover is cold and he has to warm him. His knees protest when he lays them on either side of his beloved’s hips, but he persists. The muscles in his inner thighs burn – he’s been neglecting his health, and now he’ll fail because he’s too weak. Tears spring into his eyes and he lets them fall, hoping it will soothe his love. He rises on his knees, and then sinks again. 

His body explodes into thousands of little shards, and all that is left is his soul, intact and full of emotion. He moves, despite the pain – for it is not love if it doesn’t hurt – and he cries, cries because it hurts, and because he loves, and because he so desperately doesn’t want to be alone. He bleeds, and he knows he might die, but the thought doesn’t scare him anymore. He loves, and he bleeds, and he’ll be rewarded. 

It drags on for hours, days maybe, and he grows so tired that he’s afraid he’ll have to give up. He knows he can’t – if he gives in to his weakness, his love will be gone forever, and he’ll always be alone. But he’s so tired. His muscles must have been deconstructed into a gooey mass of proteins, and he doesn’t know if his heart is still beating. He doesn’t care. All he knows is that his lover needs him, and as long as he can move, he must. And if he’s to give his dying breath to love, then so be it. He wouldn’t have lived in vain.

One second he’s barely alive. In the next, his body catches fire and he burns, burns alive in terrible ecstasy, in ambrosial agony, and he has a purpose. One second, his breath catches in his throat, in the next he doesn’t need to breathe. One second his heart threatens to give up, in the next he has no blood for it to pump. One second he’s alone. 

The next, his beloved speaks to him. 

Not with something as mundane or imperfect as words. Not even with gestures and touch, even though that comes close. Their whole beings merge together and Hux can feel his love’s thoughts clearer than his own – and he’s happy, so utterly happy, because he’s not alone anymore. Warmth caresses him, and if he still had a body, he’d relax so thoroughly he’d stop breathing. 

Beloved asks for something. Hux has to give him everything he has, and more, if beloved needs it, but he’s afraid. Something uncomfortable, a forgotten thought, lingers at the back of his skull, and pulls him away. He struggles, but his connection with beloved weakens and he’s dragged back into the ugly, messy world of earthly problems and pains. 

The second Hux comes to his senses, several things hit him at once. 

One – he’s kneeling naked on the dissection table and he’s apparently been fucking himself on the corpse’s impossible erection, the proof of it pearly white on the cadaver’s abdomen. Two – he’s bleeding profusely, from his ass, from his nose, his ears. Three – he doesn’t feel any pain. Even now, he’s hard, his cock throbbing with arousal. He’s almost mad with desire, and he only now realises that he’s still rolling his hips, seeking friction. Four – his heart is beating so hard and fast that he fears it will give up. And five – someone outside the door is calling his name. 

“Doctor Hux! Open up, or I’ll have to call the police!” 

Hux scrambles to get off the table. If he’s fast enough, he can still make this right, can still clean up and say that he lost consciousness due to some seizure. He can still make it, if only he’ll be fast enough – 

The door flies open and a shocked tech appears in the frame. Hux is naked, sticky with blood and come, and for a second he can’t move. Then, he springs forward with impossible speed and agility, and grabs the tech by the shoulder, pulling him in. The door slams shut on its own and Hux throws the tech onto the ground with so much force that he hears a crack. He growls and spits on the lifeless body on the ground. 

_ Come here. _

Hux turns to the table. The man on it is not dead anymore. He’s sitting up, his eyes unfocused, hiding immense, unimaginable intelligence. Hux watches him, a painful need to adore, to worship spreading through his body. His knees give out as if reflexively, and he bows his head.

_ Come here. _

The voice is urgent, authoritative. He’s displeased with Hux, and Hux doesn’t know why. He’s being courteous–

_ I want you here. _

Hux looks up. He’s watching him, his eyes filled with fire, and Hux wants nothing more than to leap into his arms. 

_ Then why don’t you? _

“Can I?” 

He extends a hand towards Hux, inviting, and Hux is not sure if he can take it, but he rises to his feet. He takes two careful steps closer. 

_ You bound your soul to mine. You’re my equal now. _

Hux stops between his legs. His hands shake when he lays them on the perfect pectorals. 

“What’s your name?” Hux asks, feeling like he has to know. 

_ My true name is too complicated for you just yet. You can call me Ren for now. _

“Ren,” Hux breathes out, and then again, against Ren’s impossibly plush lips, “Ren.” 

Kissing Ren feels like Hux imagines drinking fire to feel like. But instead of being painful, it’s invigorating, intoxicating. His face, his neck, his chest, tingle, the warmth spreading through him. Ren’s arms close around him, and most beautiful ecstasy consumes Hux. He trembles, too full of it, and he feels like his bliss will tear him into pieces. His hand is slippery on Ren’s marble skin. He opens his eyes. He’s covered in blood. 

Hux pulls away from the kiss, and pleasure turns to pain. Black dots dance in his vision and he wishes to die, just to make the pain go away.

“Shhh, shh, love,” Ren whispers, “you’re almost there. Stay with me. I’ll make you the happiest person alive. Just stay with me.”

Hux’s head feels like it’s splitting in half, and he tries to pull away, to run. But running takes energy. Submitting is easy. Painless. Quick.

He sighs.

“I love you,” Ren mumbles, “I’m going to make you my consort and we’ll rule the universe together. I was looking for you for aeons, on so many worlds. And now I finally have you. Please stay with me.”

Hux is too exhausted to realise he can hear Ren’s voice coming to him from a distance rather than vibrating within his bones like he did before. His soul basks in the meaning of the words. He’s important. He’s the only one in existence for this powerful being. For this god. He’s sure Ren is a god, there’s no mistaking it now. 

Hux has always believed in gods, nameless and eternal, so powerful that their might is beyond comprehension of the human mind. All the gods people worshipped in masses? Those were just reflections of real deities. Hux fancied himself capable of imagining greater things than others. Religion has always been a little too tight, a little too constrained for him. And maybe now, he will see it for himself, he will get a glimpse of the divine. 

“You will. I’ll show you everything, I’ll give you everything. I’ve been waiting for you so long. You were promised to me, and I waited so long for you. You’re perfect, you’re so perfect. So bright.”

Hux hesitates, just for a blink of an eye. This feels too perfect to be true, too simple. He’s never had a serious relationship before, and now he was destined for a powerful god? 

“How else do you think you could feel my presence in the forest? How else could you bring me to this world? We are connected, and you were looking for me as much as I was looking for you, weren’t you?”

Hux recalls all those dating apps he installed and deleted immediately. He recalls all those dates he went on, constantly asking himself: “This is it? This is what all the fuss is about?” 

He isn’t inside his body anymore, so he can’t press himself against Ren. But the thing is, with Ren, he doesn’t have to.

“Are you mine?” Ren asks. 

“Yes.” 

The green light flickers. The digits are reflected on a small ceramic mug standing nearby, a strainer with black, shrivelled leaves prepared for tea that will never be drunk. 

06:13

The green light dies.

A body is lying on the floor of the dissection room, charred beyond recognition. The plastic equipment is distorted into grotesque shapes, as if it were melted down. The metal of the table would be impossibly hot to the touch, if only there were anyone to touch it. The room is bathed in red light from the EXIT sign above the door, the lightbulb above head burned to a crisp. Liquid nitrogen leaks from a broken pipe underneath, but it will be a while before anyone notices. 

At 06:17, a fifty year old tech yawns as he unlocks the door to the forensics department with his employee card. He comes to work earlier, because he has to drop his wife off at her workplace. He trods through the eerily dark corridor. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and his heart rate speeds up. He doesn’t know why, but he’s nervous. The department is too quiet, too dark. He searches for the light switch, feeling the wall in the dark. He flicks it on, but nothing happens. Alarmed, he speeds up. 

At 06:25, an electrician goes to check on the lights in the department of forensic pathology, because the lights seem to have gone out a while ago but the back-up generator didn’t kick in yet. The building is dark, and irrational fear, rooted deep within his very core, a remainder from times when his ancestors still had gills, chills him to the bone. He swallows the lump in his throat, telling himself not to be a sissy – the hospital is full of people – but he can’t control his heartbeat, or his imagination. Doesn’t he always say how stupid people in horror movies are, when they go into the obviously suspicious room? Horror movies are not real, but his boss eager to sack him is, so he turns his flashlight on and goes to search for the night staff. 

At 6:38, they run into each other in the corridor. Seeing another conscious person in the gloomy building is almost like a revelation. They both feel some of the weight on their shoulders lift, and together, they gather the courage to confront the room they’d been avoiding. 

At 6:54, the electrician pushes open the door to the ER, his eyes unfocused and skipping frantically from side to side. 

“Help him,” he mutters, and collapses to the ground. 

At 7:06, people all over the world notice a peculiar phenomenon on the sky, which they can only describe as a soundless explosion, like fireworks. Some begin to gather weapons and food, and build stronger fences around their gardens and houses. Several are admitted into mental health hospitals. 

By the end of the day, news are filled with clear images of a bright green galaxy that seems to have formed overnight. Astronomers speak over one another in special tv relations. All channels, even the gossip ones, have snatched a scientist. People who have never even thought of appearing on television have overnight become celebrities. Everyone and their cat have a theory about what happened, and people claiming to have seen a ufo celebrate a triumph. 

Among such tumult and exhilaration, nobody remembers the mysterious body recovered in the wee hours of the day, or even the fact that in the eerie department of forensic pathology, there used to work a doctor called Armitage Hux. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/EllstraH) and [tumblr](http://www.ellstra.tumblr.com/)


End file.
